Even as a young girl in Turkey, Selma knew she would become an artist. She has experimented with many mediums; knitting, crochet, wax batik, carving, glasswork, glass mosaic, stone-ceramics, fabrics, and wood.
She studied painting and earned a Fine Arts degree from Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir. In 1995, she created a successful hat company in Istanbul. Intent on expanding her passion for art and design, Selma moved to New York in 1999 to create her clothing line.
Selma found her first spiral material in a dumpster in Brooklyn and began recycling this unique ribbon form, which happened to be perfect to create her Spiral Dresses. One long ribbon of fabric goes around the body and spirals as one continuous, unending form with no side-seams. Selma uses mostly stretch cotton fabric, which is easy to wear, extremely comfortable, hand-washable, and travels well.
Any material that can be sewn together in a ribbon form provides a continuous, unending relationship between time and space while linking the inner and outer world in an energetic aesthetic that flatters all bodies.
Selma’s work with this spiral concept manifests her primordial need to collaborate with the human body; she searches for infinite beauty and detail in these spiral works which find their form in the bodies who wear them. Every piece Selma creates embodies the basics of both stillness and fluidity.
As a New York-based fashion designer and Wearable Art designer, she’s been an international finalist in the Avant-Garde category for the Gen Art Styles 2004 Fashion and Awards Show and was also selected by FORWARD’s style council, as a key member and representative of New York’s creative industry. She also was a winner in the Art for Progress contest in the Fashion Designer category.
Her work has been featured in many international magazines and awards shows;
For twenty years, Selma’s enigmatic Spiral Dress design has evolved and grown; her dresses celebrate the beauty of women of all ages as well as women’s empowerment.